The Wykehamist
To my knowledge, there were five Russians who came in the 1950s: two Zvegintzov brothers, two Mrosovsky brothers and Pasternak’ s nephew whom I mentioned before. These boys were a lot less‘ Russian’ than their parents— they all grew up in England— so you would probably have struggled to tell them apart from your average Wykehamist.
Nicholas Zvegintzov( Coll:, 1952-58)
Nicholas was an‘ active’ member of SROGUS, performing in various College plays. Strangely enough, he ended up as a climate activist in West Virginia, moving to the coal town Duo and joining the West Virginia Highlands Conservatory, when he pushed Carter into signing the National Parks Act. He also worked as a coder and was one of the first‘ computer experts’ to reject the Y2K panic. Later, he moved to Staten Island and continued being an activist for various things, such as transport reform, until his death in June 2024.
Alexander Grebnev( E, 1996-98)
Alexander’ s father, also named Alexander, was the chairman from 1988 to 1997 of one of the first commercial banks in Russia. At the College, his son was known to be a‘ legendary’ judoist, a passion he maintains to this day. He went on to read Mathematics at Cambridge, after which he left for London and spent fifteen years working at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Then, Grebnev started his own businesses— Oxygen and Moonshot Capital— and was very successful with crypto until the 2022 FTX crash. He currently enjoys a life of luxury in a large Knightsbridge home. He occasionally returns to Russia.
Nicholas Mrosovsky( H, 1948-52)
Nicholas was the grandson of Mattia Battistini— the‘ King of Baritones’— an Italian performer who moved to Petrograd, as it was then known in 1892. His grandmother was one of Battistini’ s‘ young Russian admirers’, even though he was already married. His father Pyotr, who was similarly educated in England, was the result of this. Nicholas was Sen Co Prae, as well as being a swimmer and an overall talented athlete. After leaving the College, he dedicated his entire life to marine biology, joining the University of Toronto. He passed away in 2015. His brother, Ivan Mrosovsky( H, 1946-50), died in 2014.
Nick Zvegintzov, 2010s.
Moving swiftly on, we finish our exploration by looking forward to the Russians of the late twentieth century. These were the‘ New Russians’; they mostly came from backgrounds of newly-made but very substantial wealth. They wanted to become integrated into global society— or, at least, their parents did. It was quite hard finding information on some of these people— here, I present you with 2 of the most interesting.
Alexander Grebnev, 2022
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